Broadband News

Amazon Fire TV adds to space and bandwidth battle in the home

The push to get more of us using IPTV on our main TV, or for second and
third televisions around the home continues with the launch of the Amazon Fire TV in the UK
after its US launch earlier in 2014.

The diminutive box (115mm x 115mm x 17.5mm) hides a quad core processor
backed up with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. Importantly it includes an
Ethernet port to avoid wireless issues (it does support 802.11 a/b/g/n too) and
an optical output for sound along with the by now standard HDMI port. Video
output is at 1080p at up to 60fps so image quality should be good assuming your
broadband connection can through enough data at the box.

Price wise the device is usually £79, but until Monday 8th September Amazon
Prime members get a £30 discount.

In terms of content the big names like Amazon Instant Video and Netflix are
available, along with Spotify but other services like the BBC iPlayer and NOW
TV are absent, the lack of the iPlayer may stifle demand in the UK. There is of
course loads of Android games available and a controller (£34.99) to give you
games console.

The Amazon Fire is not locked down to the extent of many other devices,
which means XBMC can be utilised (assuming the UK
version has not been crippled) and this allows you to create a power media
centre.

One aspect that might be very interesting is the Fire TV carries out some
predictive content caching so that you avoid the tiresome few seconds of
buffering at the start of a film. If the Fire TV lets you download content in a
similar way to the Fire tablets, those with slow connections will be able to
download content and avoid buffering or enjoy it in much better quality than an
on-demand stream.